The Chalk Giants (22 page)

Drums thudded on the wharf. Matt swung to the platform above
Looker’s
stern cabin, shipped his lever, drove home the wedges that secured it to the great shaft of the oar. Clattering rose from amidships as the rowers took their places, eased the blades of the long oars through the ports.
Looker
rolled slowly, shedding water in streams from the awnings rigged above her deck. Men ran forward skidding and slipping; ropes splashed into the sea.

The drums stopped. Ranna, knife in hand, held up a struggling cockerel; and Rand spoke quickly from the greatship’s stern. ‘No blood,’ he said. ‘Wine if the Gods must have it, or water; but spill no blood, Ranna. It is not my will.’

In the stillness, the hiss of rain sounded clearly. The great-ship surged and creaked, feeling already the lift of the open sea. A rope groaned, tightening. Egril swore, circling finger and thumb beneath his cloak; Elgro shrugged, and spat. The priest turned his masked face to the ship; and a shout from Matt brought the oars crashing down. The last lines snaked away; the blades rose once in salute, dipped again.
Looker
steadied and began to gather way, trailing a greyish sheen of wake. The last the villagers saw of her was the rhythmic flash of her rowing banks, the last they heard the thudding of her drum. Then she was gone, vanished like a spirit into the shadowy sea.

She pulled hard and steady the rest of the day, following the vague loom of the nearer shore. All day till evening, the rain roared unceasing. The bows fell and rose, slicing the sea; spray flew back in stinging sheets, mingled with the slosh of rainwater on the decks. The drum beat, timing the strokes; the rowers leaned their weight forward and back, monotonously, faces blank. Their passage was unobserved; no fishing boat would put from shore in weather such as this, no warlord in his proper mind leave the shelter of his haven.

Below decks, the little cabin stank of wet leather and cloth. Rand groaned and tossed, the hammock in which he lay swaying to the movements of the ship. The timbers of
Looker
creaked and squeaked and talked; the drumbeats echoed in the tiny space, becoming the ringing of a fearsome gong, the smashing of an iron-clad ram against an oaken door. He muttered, rubbing at his face, fumbling for the amulet round his neck. In time, the fever that had gripped him abated; he fell into a troubled sleep.

A strange thing happened. It seemed the stout sides of
Looker
grew clear as glass, so that through them he could see the waves and restless sky. The waves lapped and hissed, foam gleaming on their crests; through and between them a nightmare swam, trailing its complex body, holding up long skinned arms.

His shout, ringing through the ship, startled the rowers on their benches. He sat up convulsively, crashed his head with bruising force against a deck beam. Hands gripped his upper arms. He threshed, wildly; and intelligence came back to his eyes. He lay panting and sweating; and the Dancing Man smiled. ‘The rain has eased, my Lord,’ he said. ‘We have made a good offing; will it please you to set a course?’

The greatship lay motionless in the water, steadied by her oars. Rand stared round him blinking, feeling the evening air move cool against his skin. Astern, dimly visible in the growing night, were the ragged mountains of Sealand. Ahead the edge of the cloud-pall loomed low across the water, seeming more solid than the land. The sun was setting, in a miles-long tumble of copper light; the sea was calm, and empty.

He climbed to the forward grating, stood clinging to the stempost. He ran a hand across his face, swallowed. ‘South,’ he said. ‘South and west, Elgro. Take me to the Islands of Ghosts.’

Men scurried into
Looker’s
rigging. Her sail, with the great red Mark of the House, fell and bellied; ropes flew and cracked as the canvas was sheeted home. Water bubbled under her stem; and at last the long oars came dripping inboard. The breeze blew steadily; she gathered speed, on course for the Lands of the Dead.

Rand stayed on the lookout platform, feet apart, one hand gripping the stempost, the wind moving his hair. The sun sank crimson and angry, the mountains veiled themselves in dark. The rowers prepared their evening meal, stretched tired limbs, rolled beneath the benches. Once Elgro brought food for his lord, a bowl of rich-smelling soup; but Rand refused it, gently, turned his eyes back to the sea. Elgro, cursing under his breath, padded the way he had come; and overheard the seaman Dendril mutter to his friend Cultrinn Barehead. ‘The nights are full of wonders,’ he said, ‘when the favoured of the Gods turn their hands to wetnursing. Who can tell; when we return to Sealand, perhaps we shall find all the nursemaids have become priests.’

Elgro tripped over the butt of an ill-stowed oar, flinging the contents of the bowl with some accuracy at the speaker’s head. Dendril swore, clawing the scalding mess from his face and beard; when he could see again Elgro’s vicelike fingers were gripping his shoulder, the pale eyes of the Dancing Man staring into his own.

‘I heard you curse the spilled soup, friend, and that is all,’ said Elgro softly. ‘Which is as well for you...’

The rigging of
Looker
creaked in the night wind. The rowers snored, wrapped in their sealskin cloaks; and the drum was quiet. For Rand, the great ram had ceased to beat.

Her eyes were blue; light, clear blue like the horizon of the summer sea. Her hair hung to her waist, pale as foam, garlanded with flowers and berries. Her hands were slender, her hips broad. She broke bread for him, laughing, at ease in her husband’s Hall, while the kept-men of King Engor snored with the dogs on the rush-piled floor. The firelight flickered, bronzing her skin; her hand brushed his arm, cool and soft as a moth. She raised her cup to drink; his lips shaped her name, Deandi.

He moved in the hammock, muttering.

He had been Prince of the Crab, in that far-off time; a tall, inward, powerful young man, given to strange fits of brooding, to hunting and wandering by himself, to little company. On feast days, when mead and metheglin and beer ran like water, when the great Hall of the Crab shone red and smoky with the glare of torches and big-breasted girls pranced and jiggled on the table-tops, Rand sat apart, listening as like as not to the tales of fishermen. He had never been known to pay attention to any woman, much less seek her bed; so that his father the King put scorn on him, taunting his cowardice, calling him less than a man. He sent him finally to tend the crab pots for a month, saying they seemed to be his greatest love; and folk grinned behind their hands to see the Prince in the trews and apron of a fisherman. Rand performed his duties gravely, neither sad nor gay, rising early on misty mornings, sculling out in a borrowed coracle to haul at the rough black lines, fill his fish tubs with the wriggling catch. The warboats passed him, on their great way to and from Crab Gut. Sometimes their crews hailed him, much amused at his expense; but Rand merely smiled and waved back, balanced in the rocking chip of a boat, showing his even white teeth. He was without doubt a very strange young man, particularly for the son of a King.

Cedda, though powerful, was old, nearing his sixtieth year. His health was not what it had been; so that when he laid siege to the tower of his neighbour Fenrick many shook their heads, declaring it would be the last war he would wage. In that they were correct; for after a month Cedda, cursing feebly, was carried on a great litter from the scene of his endeavours, a marsh fever in his bones. He lived long enough to see the stronghold breached, its defenders sworded and its cattle driven to new fields; then he passed to the Gods, leaving Rand as patrimony a Kingdom and a blood feud, neither of which it seemed the young man much desired. For the halfbrother of Fenrick was Engor the Wolf; and the wife of Engor was Deandi, of the cool white arms.

He called her from the hammock, time and again, beating his fist on the cabin’s wooden side.

He opened his eyes. Grey light seeped into the little space; in his mouth was a taste like blood. He swung his legs down, stood gripping a stanchion.
Looker
rolled slowly. The tension of the great truss thrilled in the woodwork; timber creaked and shifted, whispering.

He pulled a cloak round himself, unlatched the cabin door. He stepped into a shadowed world. The water lapped and bubbled; the sky was grey as new iron. The rowers clustered on their benches, still wrapped in their cloaks; the sail slapped idly at the mast. Astern, the land had vanished;
Looker
was a speck, in the great waste of the sea.

He walked forward, stood shivering a little and chafing his hands. A touch at his arm made him turn; he stared into the Dancing Man’s long eyes, seeing the strange head with its frizz of hair, half red, half badger-grey. Elgro said, ‘Good morning, my Lord.’

He looked back at the water, and smiled. He said, ‘It’s like the frozen world the priests talk about, where men are as old as mountains.’ He leaned his back to the stempost, stared up at the tall mast struts. He let his eyes move down to the truss and the long ash poles that tightened it, the awnings rolled on their spars, the cramped complexity of the deck. He said, ‘Elgro, how old is this ship?’

Elgro considered, running blunt fingers through his thatch. ‘Your father built her, in his own youth,’ he said, ‘to fight a war. That was two seasons before the great flood, when the roof blew off the Tower and the sea monster came ashore. And five years before he took the throne himself, and made a war with Dendril and the sons of Erol of the Fen.’ He shrugged. ‘Many years, my Lord,’ he said. ‘Too many to count in the head.’

Rand nodded, slowly. His skull felt hollow and empty, as though he had been drinking Midsea wine. He closed his eyes; and the rocking of the vessel seemed intensified. He said, ‘It all comes back. I dreamed again last night. Elgro, was it right? For such a little sin?’

The other pursed his lips. He said, ‘I danced the ghosts away the night you were born. Don’t ask me to answer for Gods.’

Rand frowned, as if at some effort of memory. He said, ‘We stand close enough; yet we are so far apart. Sometimes it seems I stand apart from all men; even you, Elgro. As if there’s no one in the entire world but me. At others ... it’s as if we were ghosts ourselves. Wailing and chattering, none able to hear the next.’

Elgro watched stolidly, not answering. A silence; then Rand sighed. He said, ‘I remember the first time I sailed with my father. I was five. We went to Seal Hold, where Tenril had his Tower. Do you remember?’

The Dancing Man nodded.

Rand said, ‘It was summer, so the sun never set. There was a big tent, on the shore. You could hear the shouting from it, and the dancers’ bells. I sat and watched the seals out on the rocks. The light was strange. It was as if it came from inside things. From everything.’

Elgro waited.

Rand said, ‘Later, the sea was blue. You could smell the land, miles out across the water. Like hay, and flowers. That was the night she came with me.’

Elgro said, ‘My Lord, you must eat now.’

Rand shook his head, eyes vague. He said, ‘She wanted to sail north, for ever. To see the Ice Giants, and find the Bear King’s Hall.’ He turned. He said, ‘What do they say of these Ghost Islands? Tell me again.’

Elgro shrugged. ‘They say the spirits fly there, after death. And that the cliffs are lined with wailing Gods; and Kings from old time thick as sprouting grass.’

Rand smiled again. ‘And you?’

Elgro shook his head. ‘I say most lands are much the same, my Lord. The sun sets and rises, the people wake and sleep. Some scratch the ground, some fish. Others make war.’

Rand said, ‘And we do none of these.’ He leaned his elbows on the greatship’s curving side, stared at the sea. He said, ‘When she came with me, it was all new again. I thought I could live for ever.’

Astern, the sun was like a blind bright eye. The rowers stretched, scratching themselves. Somebody laughed; a crewman swaggered to the ship’s side to piddle in the sea. Rand straightened. He said, ‘To have such nights, as make you pray for dawn. Elgro, dance one Ghost for me. I’d give you half the world.’

The wind rose, through the day.
Looker
made good speed, hissing her way south, trailing a wake of brilliant foam. Once mountains showed high and faint to the east; once the lookout called for a strange sail. The greatship stood well clear. By nightfall, the sea was empty again. The wind still blew from the north, strong and cold.

A medley of sounds roused Rand from sleep. Water boomed and seethed, timbers groaned, spray flew rattling across the planking overhead.
Looker
was in wild motion; rising, rolling, sliding headlong into the troughs of waves. He reeled his way on deck, stood clinging to a mast strut. Away to the west stretched a ragged coast. He screwed his eyes, shouted a question; at his side Egril nodded sombrely, the long hair flying round his face. He said, ‘The Ghost Islands, my Lord. But we make no landfall here.’

By midday the weather had worsened. Squall after squall swept down; the greatship laboured, rolling lee scuppers under, pitching in a welter of white. Twice Egril ordered the crewmen aloft to take in sail. The wind yelled in the rigging, plucking at their backs as they climbed.
Looker
fled south, under a rag of canvas; and still the wind increased. The yard was braced round, and again; but the tide was setting now toward the coast, sweeping the vessel to leeward. Egril called for the oars to be unshipped; and a weary struggle began. Rand set himself to row with the rest, the Dancing Man at his side.

The drum throbbed, urgently; he flung his weight forward and back, hearing the hammer blows beneath the hull, feeling the planking shake under his feet. Blisters formed and broke on his palms; but the pain and labour were antidotes to memory. For a time, he felt nearly happy.

Through the day, the vessel held her own; but toward nightfall the wind, gusting as violently as ever, veered to the east. Matt and Egril held anxious counsel, clinging to the lee of the wildly tossing poop. To the south, dim in the fading light, stretched a long spit of land. Beyond, if
Looker
could weather the point, lay the deepwater channel separating the north and south Ghost Islands. Once through it a vessel might run for days; to the edge of the world, if need be.